I’m having a good time catching up on emails, scheduling school visits, picking up the smelly dog from the groomer (smells better now), making Christmas plans, and watching the Live Radar go ’round and ’round a blank screen.
Can you guess that the weather is a bit boring right now? Not much has changed in the two days I took off. A ridge offshore is giving us weak weather systems in northwesterly flow behind it. Another one moves by to the north tomorrow. That leaves us with lots of cloud cover but little or no rain.
We finally get a change starting Saturday. The ridge breaks down and is replaced by a trough in the Gulf of Alaska. This sends wetter and cool weather systems our way. What I notice this evening is that none of these through at least the end of next week appear to be unusually strong. With time though, the snowpack in the Cascades will be building up. As for you snow lovers out there, I don’t see a chance of very cold weather or low elevation snow through the 20th. See? once I bought that generator the weather calmed down. Maybe I’d better take it back…Mark Nelsen
FOX 12 Weather Blog 
I don’t get it was there going to be chance of flurries this morning becuase I have a thick fog with little flurries.
Not the mountains, no, but away from the river. I’d say in an area from Moses Lake to Pendleton is what greatly influences the Gorge wind. IMO that’s where the cold air pools as you can see when high pressure builds strongly in the region how the cold air stays trapped with persistent low clouds/fog present.
goodnight all, i will leave you with that.
rob and jesse, you are both mistaken. look at the dark part on this http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/mesowest/mwmap.php?map=pdt
that is the true basin, or where we get most of our air. last week, when we had our east wind, strong even, up to -7mb i believe, temps above 2000′ were in the teens and twenties, while below 1000′ they were at or above freezing, and that couldnt even give us freezing temps at TTD. and while it looks like most of the actual basin is around 1000′, the cold air we usually get is from the lower parts, when the high pressure builds there. i dont think much of it comes off the mt’s that never seems to cool as much, what im saying does verify because our east wind is cause by the isobars stacking inside the gorge, so most our air would come just east of the gorge most of the time. true, air would have to replace it, but it would come from the lowest parts of the basin until it got strong enough to pull some off the higher areas.
1,000’+ after looking further. But yeah it pools away from the river in central-eastern Washington.
Mat, Mark is the best met in town. But basing all your conclusions on what one person thinks is no fun.
I take Mark’s thoughts into heavy consideration when trying to figure out what the weather will do, but that doesn’t mean I ignore everything else, including very valid interpretations from seasoned members of our own blog here.
Timmy, Pendleton is above 1,000 ft in Elevation. Much of the Columbia Basin is. The only places that aren’t are directly along the Columbia or Snake Rivers.
I’ll tell you, having a good snowpack between 1,000 and 2,000 ft out there can be very good for us. I would rather get a cold air supply from an airmass that is sitting over an area where all but the very lowest elevations are snowcovered, than one where there is none.
No really the cold air pools in the Columbia Basin away from the river in central-eastern Washington and 2,000’+ and flows downhill from high pressure to lower pressure and it can only find one gap to do so, through the Columbia Gorge. We’ve seen Mark show a graphic of this many, many times in the past. Now yes the air does hypothetically come from the eastern Gorge, but it’s supplied from the Basin, then is pulled westward due to that pressure gradient to The Dalles, then to Hood River, then Cascade Locks, etc, etc….
my bad andrew i was thinking of later that week.
just to clear things up, ive read some thought on here and the forum. and people are talking about getting our east winds from places “in the basin, above 1000-2000′ ” in reality, we get the cold air from places under 1000′ IE the dalles, hermiston, tri cities and such. so to say we get it off the mountains is simply a fallacy the majority of the time.
yawn….I heard it to rob I will just take a good snow storm of the century right now shall we say 3ft plus in pdx…I will fream it in my sleep at least
No, Mark didn’t say that.
He said, yyyaaaawwwwnnnnnn… boring weather, i tend to believe him.
I know I am tired, but did I or did I not hear Mark say watching for possibility of big wind storm mid-week…. *Yawn*
Well I guess marks big secret is out he uses the green wall. LOL
andrew i remember that, pendleton may have been 32f but all the real cold air was down in the basin, pendleton is above 1000′. the dalles was below 20 though.
Nice green wall, Mark!
David,
I see that.. It seems to be some type of convergence? Be nice if that slipped southward.
Saturday I can give you a good forecast Josh. its lala land past 4-5 days. Who knows, we could get an east wind storm and ice event in 5 days. Gotta love it.
That’d be the second time Josh. I’ve been down there one other time that it was snowing. No Erin either, bring lotsa beer.
http://www.wunderground.com/radar/radblast.asp?zoommode=out&num=6&delay=15&scale=0.333&noclutter=0&ID=RTX&type=N0R&lat=45.58861160&lon=-122.59750366&label=Portland%20International,%20OR&showstorms=0&map.x=358.5&map.y=252¢erx=309¢ery=609&lightning=0&showlabels=1&rainsnow=1
interesting?
Double post….aaahhhh.
Anyone with thoughts for mon/tues??
I will Mat.
Mat, we might be going down to the creek in the snow this year….ha ha. Interesting, cold pattern setting up for next week and beyond.
I will Mat.
Mat, we might be going down to the creek in the snow this year….ha ha. Cold and chilly pattern setting up for next week and beyond.
Josh, tell Reyna happy birthday from me.
Again. Watch out for Mon/Tues.
Models are showing chances for snow in the Pacific ocean due west on Sunday.
The gorge may not need to play a role on this one. Even though snow will be falling in the basin, I think its a wait and see game. Go to work, think about weather, come home, check up on the weather. Very tiring when you want cold and ice that bad too. I’m a believer if we’re still a go come Saturday night.
This has got me really thinking again hmmmmmmm…..
As of 10:00 PM
OLM-EUG -1.3mb
PDX-EUG +0.3mb
TTD-DLS -0.3mb
E-N wind* ahhhhhhhhh
Could be at the valley floor just as Mallow spoke of. It seems to be a very similar situation. I’d say it’s very critical that the Columbia Basin can remain chilly and keep the snow cover they have so we get some help from the Gorge. Wouldn’t be a great deal of cold air blasting towards us, but it may just be enough to lower dew points and if the low indeed tracks as shown we would be on the north side of it with heavy moisture pulling down colder temps with E-N with feeding into it. Hmmm…..
Hey all. Just doing my normal 48 hour check-in…lol. Need something interesting to happen then I’ll be posting more regularly.
We do need to watch out for Monday/Tuesday though. I’ve noticed some real cool upper-air moving in after Sunday night’s storm. After studying all the models there is a very good possibility of lowland snow either day. I know it is still a ways out but definitely bears watching.
Thoughts??
Very nice Rob. So if that were to come in just perfect, would you think snow to 1000 feet or what?
Yep Mat. It was 5 days later I think? and yep that was relentless fun! Lol.
Maybe it was a few days later. I just remember a ton of ice, a few snow days and a lot of east wind. Seemed to go on and on.